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Teaching Us A Lesson

If you take a wrong turn, and you're too stubborn to listen to people who know something about the terrain, you will end up a long, long way from your intended destination.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg took a wrong turn this week when, in an arrogant and ugly display of power, he bounced three members of the city's Panel for Educational Policy because they were going to vote against a new promotion standard that will likely result in thousands of additional third graders being held back.

Just hours before Monday night's vote, Mr. Bloomberg fired two of his own appointees to the panel and engineered the dismissal of the member appointed by the Staten Island borough president. Three new appointments were hastily made, and the newly constructed panel held its vote before a stunned and furious audience at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan. It approved Mr. Bloomberg's policy change, 8-5.

The mayor can look in the mirror now, flex his muscles and congratulate himself on being a tough guy. But what he cannot honestly say is that his latest theatrics were in the best interests of the city's schoolkids.

Listen up: It is not a good idea to allow children who are not learning to simply walk out of one grade and into another without any kind of intervention. But the question of what to do about youngsters who are not learning is enormously complex. And the answers won't be found in the politically charged impulse to hold back third graders on the basis of a test score, or by publicly humiliating thoughtful individuals who are serious about trying to help children.

For some reason Mr. Bloomberg felt the need to tell the press that one of the women dumped from the panel had been crying. And in a reference to failing third graders, he told a radio audience: ''Yes, they may cry a little bit. But children in the third grade cry a lot, and it's part of the growing-up process.''

It's not just third graders who could do with a little growing up.

''Mayoral control means mayoral control, thank you very much,'' said Mr. Bloomberg. It came across as a sneer.

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What is happening under mayoral control is that politics is playing a bigger role than ever before in the management of the school system. Mr. Bloomberg benefits politically from the third-grade retention plan in at least two ways:

There is substantial public support for holding back failing students, whether it helps kids or not. (It's not widely known, but New York City already holds back about 5,000 third graders each year.) And holding back a few thousand additional third graders this year will inevitably lead to higher scores in the benchmark fourth-grade tests next year, which just happens to be a re-election year for Hizzoner.

Meanwhile, the mayor's political opponents are already crafting plans to use his management of the schools (and especially this week's heavy-handed tactics) as a campaign issue. The system is becoming more polarized, not less. More directly political, not less.

Politics aside, what the mayor and his handpicked chancellor, Joel Klein, seem not to understand is that whatever their personal vision might be, the management of the New York City school system has to be a cooperative effort. There are 1.1 million children and more than 1,000 schools in the system. Mr. Bloomberg may have the legal powers of a dictator when it comes to the public schools, but if he insists on using that power to actually behave as a dictator, he is doomed to fail.

The third-grade retention plan was initially designed to hold back youngsters on the basis of a single test, a truly unconscionable practice. That caused such an outcry, and the Panel on Educational Policy objected so vociferously, that it was changed. Youngsters will now get a second crack at the test, and there is an appeals process.

It's still an exercise in futility, however, and a lousy approach to school reform. Anybody can hold a kid back. The tough part is teaching the kid to read. There are many programs and policies that have proved over several years to be effective in educating big-city children. A fair question to ask is why Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein, given such an array of choices, have so stubbornly thrown their weight behind a policy that has failed again and again and again.